Monthly Update November 2023
Welcome to our school monthly update for November 2023. Our school offers lessons for elementary school-aged children and above. In addition, we provide daily conversation and business English classes for adults. Lessons are offered at our school location in Yoga, Tokyo. Additionally, we provide Zoom lessons for remote students.
Please contact us at staff@bumblebenglish.com if you are interested in a trial lesson or have any questions about our school.
Group Lessons - Kids
Our beginner-level classes that meet on Mondays and Fridays are doing very well. These classes consist of 1st-grade and 2nd-grade elementary school students. We have progressed through the Let’s Go Beginner series and worked on a related phonics textbook. I am happy that most students pronounce sounds and letter combinations well. Things are going so well that I have introduced a short book series that students use for writing practice. As the students are learning Japanese writing at this age, learning to write English is usually an issue. Of course, the 2nd-grade students have better control of their pencils and can write a bit neater; the 1st-graders have significantly improved since March.
Our Level 2 students, those using Level 2 of the Let’s Go series, are just about finished with the textbook. As this textbook includes grammar points taught in Japanese junior high schools, it was difficult, but they progressed well with much review, role-playing, and student effort. Unfortunately, the amount of vocabulary in these textbooks is limited, so we have introduced Eiken Level 5 and Level 4 vocabulary. This vocabulary supplements students’ learning and provides a more robust vocabulary base as they progress in their English learning journey.
Our Thursday classes are more advanced, and the students have progressed from the ESL textbooks we usually use. In these classes, we use standard workbooks native-level students use in the United States in these classes. These materials cover reading comprehension, writing, and grammar. To supplement their speaking, we work on self-introductions and short speeches. We want to work on these areas more, as older students need help with talking for more than three minutes on a single topic.
In November, we continued to hold lessons for pre-elementary school-age students. Two Sunday lessons were held, and activities included songs, flashcards, and physical activities. We plan to hold two more classes in December, and then we will consider holding these lessons on a more regular basis.
Private Lessons - Kids
Most of our students in private lessons are doing well. One minor issue we notice is with some junior high and high school students. These students focus on grammar study during their regular English lessons. This results in lower verbal communication ability. As a result, we spend a lot of time improving their speaking skills by Q&A of their reading assignments, starting with asking simple questions where the students can find the answers directly in the reading passages and gradually increasing difficulty to questions that ask their opinions on various topics.
As mentioned last month, using materials that introduce new vocabulary is essential. Learning several synonyms and antonyms for the same word can dramatically increase fluency, reading comprehension, and overall language skills. For our junior and senior high school students, we have seen a nice improvement in how they use these new words, and next, we will investigate how to use this method for our elementary school students.
Private & Group Lessons - Adults
Our Wednesday morning adult group class is going well. The lessons have incorporated a lot of role-playing and real-life situations. The class is fun, as adult students can now talk to each other and add funny comments and ideas.
For our private lesson students, we are focusing on the skills and topics each student wants to learn. For our mature students, this means English preparation for an African safari, and for another student, this means creating lesson materials that provide more complicated sentence structures. Our business English students still use the Business English Pod, BEP materials.
This month, materials have centered on telephone English and strategic decision-making. Via Zoom, we are still teaching a student who lives in Paris. This student is also using BEP materials, not for business purposes, but for general conversation improvement. After some modification, many phrases and dialogues in the BEP material can also be used for personal conversations.
Summary
Our new students started to feel more comfortable during the lessons, and several adult students have expressed specific preferences for lesson topics. We continued our pre-elementary school-age lessons and plan to turn this lesson into a more regularly scheduled program. Our elementary school-age group classes are all progressing well and have moved to more advanced workbooks and learning levels.
We encourage anyone interested in our school to contact us for a free trial lesson. Online lessons are available as well for students regardless of location.
As always, please get in touch with us directly for information about our school: staff@bumblebenglish.com
